How the Bolsonaro coup works

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil.ADRIANO MACHADO / Reuters

In the coup of Jair Bolsonaro, the institutions continue to function without functioning.

A Supreme Court that, instead of complying with the Constitution when the president insults it in a public demonstration, makes one more speech.

A Chamber of Deputies whose president, Arthur Lira, sits on 130 requests for

because Bolsonaro guarantees him and his cronies unlimited public money.

An Attorney General whose attorney general, Augusto Aras, is a collaborator who hopes Bolsonaro will reward him with a seat on the Supreme Court.

Why bother to promote the classic coup scenes, which attract the attention of the world, if it is more effective to count on the cowardice of some and the corruption of others?

More information

• Brazil's right and left try to rehearse unity with a demonstration against Bolsonaro

Bolsonaro had already used a similar strategy with the environment ministry. Before assuming power, he launched the hoax that his government would not have that ministry. Protests erupted from everywhere. Then he kept it and put in command Ricardo Salles, a convicted of environmental crimes that caused the greatest destruction in the history of the portfolio, responsible for the increase in deforestation and fires in the Amazon. The same is happening now. Bolsonaro incites his followers to rise up against the institutions, and especially against the Supreme Court, but he discovers that it is more worth letting what does not work against him work. Use the same method with the press as well. You do not have to censor it, as the dictatorships of the past did.It is enough to discredit her by convincing her followers that the newspapers only tell lies. In Bolsonaro's coup, for the moment it is not necessary to close anything, only to make it irrelevant.

Thus, in the September 7 demonstration, the president declared that he would not abide by the decisions of the Supreme Federal Court.

He stood up to the Constitution and continued with impunity.

The tragicomic tone was set by a letter that Bolsonaro signed days later, but that was written by former President Michel Temer - the one who, in turn, struck Dilma Rousseff - that said more or less the following: “I'm sorry, people.

I got carried away ”.

On Sunday, an opposition rally only put 6,000 people on the same avenue where Bolsonaro had put 125,000 days earlier.

Organized by the right, the protest was boycotted by Lula's Workers Party and most of the left.

The result: it had little success, and the Bolsonaristas burst out laughing.

It is hard for the left to have to support the movements that led the demonstrations demanding the removal of Dilma Rousseff.

At the same time, one party calculates that it will be easier for Lula to win the 2022 elections with Bolsonaro as an opponent.

And Bolsonaro thanks him.

If opponents don't unite, he has one more year to destroy the credibility of the electoral process, following in the footsteps of his idol Donald Trump.

And make elections irrelevant, as it has done with almost everything that constitutes democracy.

Translation by

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